A sailor's preoccupation with the shore.

February 09, 2009

The Rabbit Hole

Another chain letter is weaving a Conga line among Facebook subscribers, this time drawing significance from an MP3 player set to randomly shuffle songs. The arbitrary songs are matched to a sequence of life events like a soundtrack of your life proceeding from opening credits to funeral song. The curious thing is the seeming significance in the random paring. In my case, the significance becomes more pronounced as I approach the end of my movie. For example, the birth of a child was haphazardly paired with Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy.” And others…

Final battle: “Spirits in the Material World,” by The Police. Death Scene: “Crawlin’ King Snake,” by John Lee Hooker. Funeral song: “Is there Anybody Out There,” by Pink Floyd.

Jung called it synchronicity. Giving it a name and describing it as “acausal but meaningful significance” may be reassuring doesn’t really explain the absurdity. For that you need to travel down the rabbit hole into the holographic universe. The defining characteristic of a hologram is that every piece contains all the information of the whole. If the whole were a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, then any part broken off would also contain the complete portrait of Abraham Lincoln. It’s hard to get your head around but that’s quantum mechanics for you.

If the universe is really holographic then every part contains the whole and every moment mirrors infinity. In such a world meaning can bridge the universe, time is like a snow globe, and coincidence is just a slightly different angle of view. In that world steaming entrails can once again auger the future and the crows can become portents.

…This I mean my mind to serve 'Til service is but magic, moving through the world And mind itself is magic, coursing through the flesh And flesh itself is magic, dancing on a clock, And Time itself, the magic length of God! God is Alive, Magic Is Afoot Leonard Cohen